Of the $1 billion in bonds being requested, $750 million would go to the police and $250 million to the municipal employees' plan. The city also claims that the bonds would lower the city's annual costs because of its lower interest rate.

The bond requests include $104 million for park improvements and $123 million "for the acquisition, construction, rehabilitation and equipment of the public library system and the levying of taxes sufficient for the payment thereof and interest thereon," the city has stated.

In Harris County, nine MUDs and one water control and improvement district have 25 issues on Tuesday's ballot. The requests in total authorize $826 million in bond sales for water, sewer and drainage systems, as well as roads, parks and refinancing.

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Three MUDs also had elections to their five-member boards. All candidates ran unopposed, and won.

Among the ballot measures approved was the creation of a 193-acre "defined area" in the Crosby MUD in which the district can charge a higher property tax rate. Plans for that area call for the development of 450 single-family homes, the owners of which would pay the district's current property tax rate in addition to taxes to repay bonds to reimburse the developers for infrastructure costs.

Voters in the roughly 1,200-home Mount Houston Road MUD meanwhile approved the sale of $121 million in bonds - $48.5 million for projects and $73 million to refinance existing bonds.

A few voters in MUD 552 approved a total of $270 million in general, road, parks and recreation facilities, and refunding bonds.

The district, created this year by the Texas Legislature, also elected five people to its first board of directors. They each received three votes.

The Tuesday vote follows growing scrutiny of MUDs for what critics say are serious transparency issues.

Details of the various ballot measures were again sparse this year, which might have kept voter turnout low even among more-populated districts like the one in Crosby.

"People are worried and concerned that government doesn't work for them, and if they can't put a face and a name to it, then it makes it even more remote," Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, recently told the Houston Chronicle. "In that way, it's not surprising that people don't participate in this process. They don't understand what's happening."